Photonic Bandgap Bragg Fibers: A New Platform for Realizing application-specific Specialty Optical Fibers and Components

Bragg fibers, consisting of a low index core (including air) surrounded by a series of periodic layers of alternate high and low refractive index materials, each being higher than that of the core, form a 1D photonic bandgap (PBG). In view of the multitude of individual physical parameters that characterize a Bragg fiber, they offer a wide choice of parametric avenues to tailor their propagation characteristics. Owing to their unique PBG guidance mechanism, Bragg fibers indeed exhibit unusual dispersion characteristics that are otherwise nearly impossible to achieve in conventional silica fibers. Solid core Bragg fibers, amenable to fabrication by the highly mature MCVD technology, could be designed to realize broadband supercontinuum light. This talk would review our recent works on modeling of propagation characteristics, dispersion tailoring in them for applications as metro as well as dispersion compensating fibers and also as supercontinuum light generators.